Sermon 9. The Infidelity of the Future

Opening of St. Bernard's Seminary, 2nd
October 1873

{113} It is no common occasion of thankfulness to
the Giver of all good, the Divine Head of the Church, that has led our
Rt. Revd. Father, the Bishop of this Diocese, to call us this morning
from our several homes to this place. It is with no common gladness,
with no ordinary words of rejoicing and congratulations on their lips,
that so many of his priests and of his devout laity have met him here
today in consequence of his invitation. At length this Seminary is
completed and in occupation, which has been for so long a course of
years a vision before his mind, and the subject of his prayers and
exertions. Years and years ago I have heard him say, that he never
could be at rest, till he was enabled by God's mercy to accomplish
this great work, and God has heard his persevering prayers and blessed
his unwearied exertions. I might say with truth, that even before some
of you, my dear Brethren, were born, or at least from the time that
you were in your cradles, he, as the chief Pastor of this diocese,
when {114} as yet you knew him not, has been engaged in that great
undertaking, of which you, by God's inscrutable grace, enjoy the
benefits without your own labours.

It is indeed a great event in this diocese, a
great event, I may say, in the history of English Catholics, that at
length the injunctions of Ecumenical Councils, the tradition of the
Church, the desire of the Sovereign Pontiff, are fulfilled among us,
and the Bishop's Throne is erected not merely in a dwelling of brick
or stone, in the midst of those in whom Christ is to be formed by his
teaching, that they in turn may be the edification and light and
strength of the generation which is to come after him.

This handing down of the truth from generation to
generation is obviously the direct reason for the institution of
seminaries for the education of the clergy. Christianity is one
religious idea. Superhuman in its origin, it differs from all other
religions. As man differs from quadruped, bird or reptile, so does
Christianity differ from the superstitions, heresies, and philosophies
which are around it. It has a theology and an ethical system of its
own. This is its indestructible idea. How are we to secure and
perpetuate in this world that gift from above? How are we to preserve
to the Christian people this gift, so special, so divine, so easily
hid or lost amid the imposing falsehoods with which the world abounds?

The divine provision is as follows. Each circle
of Christians has its own priest, who is the representative {115} of
the divine idea to that circle in its theological and ethical aspects.
He teaches his people, he catechizes their children, bringing them one
and all into that form of doctrine, which is his own. But the Church
is made up of many such circles. How are we to secure that they
may all speak one and the same doctrine? and that the doctrine
of the Apostles? Thus: by the rule that their respective priests
should in their turn all be taught from one and the same centre, viz.,
their common Father, the Bishop of the diocese. They are educated in
one school, that is, in one seminary; under the rule, by the voice and
example of him who is the One Pastor of all those collections or
circles of Christians, of whom they all in time to come are to be the
teachers. Catholic doctrine, Catholic morals, Catholic worship and
discipline, the Christian character, life, and conduct, all that is
necessary for being a good priest, they learn one and all from this
religious school, which is the appointed preparation for the
ministerial offices. As youths are prepared for their secular calling
by schools and teachers who teach what their calling requires, as
there are classical schools, commercial schools, teachers for each
profession, teachers of the several arts and sciences, so the sacred
ministers of the Church are made true representatives of their Bishop
when they are appointed to the charge of the Christian people, because
they come from one centre of education and from the tutelage of one
head.

Hence it is that St. Ignatius, the Martyr Bishop
of {116} Antioch, in the first century of the Church, speaking of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, comparing the union of the sacred orders
with the Bishop, likens it to a harp which is in perfect tune. He says
in his Epistle to the Ephesians, "It becomes you to concur in the
mind of your Bishop, as indeed you do. For your estimable body of
clergy, worthy of God, is in exact harmony with your Bishop, as the
strings to the harp. Hence it is that in your unanimity and concordant
charity Jesus Christ is sung. And one by one you take your parts in
the choir, so as to sing with one voice through Jesus Christ to the
Father that He may hear your petitions" (ad Eph. 4).

And if at all times this simple unity, this
perfect understanding of the members with the Head, is necessary for
the healthy action of the Church, especially is it necessary in these
perilous times. I know that all times are perilous, and that in every
time serious and anxious minds, alive to the honour of God and the
needs of man, are apt to consider no times so perilous as their own.
At all times the enemy of souls assaults with fury the Church which is
their true Mother, and at least threatens and frightens when he fails
in doing mischief. And all times have their special trials which
others have not. And so far I will admit that there were certain
specific dangers to Christians at certain other times, which do not
exist in this time. Doubtless, but still admitting this, still I think
that the trials which lie before us are such {117} as would appal and
make dizzy even such courageous hearts as St. Athanasius, St. Gregory
I, or St. Gregory VII. And they would confess that dark as the
prospect of their own day was to them severally, ours has a darkness
different in kind from any that has been before it.

The special peril of the time before us is the
spread of that plague of infidelity, that the Apostles and our Lord
Himself have predicted as the worst calamity of the last times of the
Church. And at least a shadow, a typical image of the last times is
coming over the world. I do not mean to presume to say that this is
the last time, but that it has had the evil prerogative of being like
that more terrible season, when it is said that the elect themselves
will be in danger of falling away. This applies to all Christians in
the world, but it concerns me at this moment, speaking to you, my dear
Brethren, who are being educated for our own priesthood, to see how it
is likely to be fulfilled in this country.

1. And first [Note
1] it is obvious that while the various religious bodies and sects
which surround us according to God's permission have done untold harm
to the cause of Catholic truth in their opposition to us, they have
hitherto been of great service to us in shielding and sheltering us
from the assaults of those who believed less than themselves or
nothing at all. To take one instance, {118} the approved miracles of
the Saints are not more wonderful than the miracles of the Bible. Now
the Church of England, the Wesleyans, the Dissenters, nay the
Unitarians have defended the miracles of the Bible and thereby have
given an indirect protection to the miracles of ecclesiastical
history. Nay, some of their divines have maintained certain
ecclesiastical miracles, as the appearance of the Cross to
Constantine, the subterranean fire in Julian's attempt to build the
Jewish Temple, etc. And so again the doctrines of the Holy Trinity,
the Incarnation, Atonement, etc., though as strange to the reason as
those Catholic doctrines which they reject, have been held by many of
these bodies with more or less distinctness, and thereby we have been
unassailed when we have taught them. But in these years before us it
will be much if those outlying bodies are able to defend their own
dogmatic professions. Most of them, nearly all of them, already give
signs of the pestilence having appeared among them. And as time goes
on, when there will be a crisis and a turning point, with each of
them, then it will be found that, instead of their position being in
any sense a defence for us, it will be found in possession of the
enemy. A remnant indeed may be faithful to their light, as the great
Novatian body stood by the Catholics and suffered with them during the
Arian troubles, but we shall in vain look for that safeguard from what
may be called the orthodoxy of these Protestant communions, which we
have hitherto profited by. {119}

2. Again another disadvantage to us will arise
from our very growth in numbers and influence in this country. The
Catholic Religion, when it has a free course, always must be a power
in a country. This is the mere consequence of its divine origin. While
Catholics were few and oppressed by disabilities, they were suffered
and were at peace. But now that those disabilities are taken off and
Catholics are increasing in number, it is impossible that they should
not come in collision with the opinions, the prejudices, the objects
of a Protestant country, and that without fault on any side, except
that the country is Protestant. Neither party will understand the
other, and then the old grievances in history which this country has
against Rome will be revived and operate to our disadvantage. It is
true that this age is far more gentle, kind and generous than former
ages, and Englishmen, in their ordinary state, are not cruel, but they
may easily be led to believe that their generosity may be abused on
our part, that they were unwise in liberating those who are in fact
their mortal enemies. And this general feeling of fear of us may be
such as, even with a show of reason, to turn against us even generous
minds, so that from no fault of ours, but from the natural antagonism
of a religion which cannot change with the new political states into
which the whole world is gradually moulding itself, may place us in
temporal difficulties, of which at present we have no anticipation.

And it cannot be denied that there is just now
threatening {120} the political world such a calamity. There are many
influential men who think that things are not indeed ripe as yet for
such a measure, but who look forward to the times, when whether the
one or the other great political party in the State may make it their
cry at the elections of a new Parliament, that they propose to lessen
the influence of Catholics and circumscribe their privileges. And
however this may be, two things, I think, are plain, that we shall
become more and more objects of distrust to the nation at large, and
that our Bishops and Priests will be associated in the minds of men
with the political acts of foreign Catholics, and be regarded as
members of one extended party in all countries, the enemies, as will
be thought, of civil liberty and of national progress. In this way we
may suffer disadvantages which have not weighed upon the Catholic
Church since the age of Constantine.

3. I repeat, when Catholics are a small body in a
country, they cannot easily become a mark for their enemies, but our
prospect in this time before us is that we shall be so large that our
concerns cannot be hid, and at the same time so unprotected that we
cannot but suffer. No large body can be free from scandals from the
misconduct of its members. In medieval times the Church had its courts
in which it investigated and set right what was wrong, and that
without the world knowing much about it. Now the state of things is
the very reverse. With a {121} whole population able to read, with
cheap newspapers day by day conveying the news of every court, great
and small to every home or even cottage, it is plain that we are at
the mercy of even one unworthy member or false brother. It is true
that the laws of libel are a great protection to us as to others. But
the last few years have shown us what harm can be done us by the mere
infirmities, not so much as the sins, of one or two weak minds. There
is an immense store of curiosity directed upon us in this country, and
in great measure an unkind, a malicious curiosity. If there ever was a
time when one priest will be a spectacle to men and angels it is in
the age now opening upon us.

4. Nor is this all. This general intelligence of
every class of society, general but shallow, is the means of
circulating all through the population all the misrepresentations
which the enemies of the Church make of her faith and her teaching.
Most falsehoods have some truth in them; at least those falsehoods
which are perversions of the truth are the most successful. Again,
when there is no falsehood, yet you know how strange truth may appear
to minds unfamiliar with it. You know that the true religion must be
full of mysteries—and therefore to Catholicism, if to any
profession, any body of men at all, applies the proverb that a fool
may ask a hundred questions which a wise man cannot answer. It is
scarcely possible so to answer inquiries or objections on a great
{122} number of points of our faith or practice, as to be intelligible
or persuasive to them. And hence the popular antipathy to Catholicism
seems, and will seem more and more, to be based upon reason, or common
sense, so that first the charge will seem to all classes of men true
that the Church stifles the reason of man, and next that, since it is
impossible for educated men, such as her priests, to believe what is
so opposite to reason, they must be hypocrites, professing what in
their hearts they reject.

5. I have more to say on this subject. There are,
after all, real difficulties in Revealed Religion. There are
questions, in answer to which we can only say, "I do not know."
There are arguments which cannot be met satisfactorily, from the
nature of the case—because our minds, which can easily enough
understand the objections, are not in their present state able to
receive the true answer. Nay, human language perhaps has not words to
express it in. Or again, perhaps the right answer is possible, and is
set down in your books of theology, and you know it. But things look
very different in the abstract and the concrete. You come into the
world, and fall in with the living objector and inquirer, and your
answer you find scattered to the winds. The objection comes to you now
with the force of a living expositor of it, recommended by the
earnestness and sincerity with which he holds it, with his simple
conviction of its strength and accompanied by all the collateral or
antecedent probabilities, which he heaps around it. You are {123} not
prepared for his objection being part of a system of thought, each
part of which bears one way and supports the other parts. And he will
appeal to any number of men, friends or others, who agree with him,
and they each will appeal to him and all the rest to the effect that
the Catholic view and arguments simply cannot be supported. Perhaps
the little effect you produce by the arguments which you have been
taught is such that you are quite disheartened and despond.

6. I am speaking of evils, which in their
intensity and breadth are peculiar to these times. But I have not yet
spoken of the root of all these falsehoods—the root as it ever has
been, but hidden; but in this age exposed to view and unblushingly
avowed—I mean, that spirit of infidelity itself which I began by
referring to as the great evil of our times, though of course when I
spoke of the practical force of the objections which we constantly
hear and shall hear made to Christianity, I showed it is from this
spirit that they gain their plausibility. The elementary proposition
of this new philosophy which is now so threatening is this—that in
all things we must go by reason, in nothing by faith, that things are
known and are to be received so far as they can be proved. Its
advocates say, all other knowledge has proof—why should religion be
an exception? And the mode of proof is to advance from what we know to
what we do not know, from sensible and tangible facts to sound
conclusions. The world pursued the way of faith as regards physical
{124} nature, and what came of it? Why, that till three hundred years
ago they believed, because it was the tradition, that the heavenly
bodies were fixed in solid crystalline spheres and moved round the
earth in the course of twenty-four hours. Why should not that method
which has done so much in physics, avail also as regards that higher
knowledge which the world has believed it had gained through
revelation? There is no revelation from above. There is no exercise of
faith. Seeing and proving is the only ground for believing. They go on
to say, that since proof admits of degrees, a demonstration can hardly
be had except in mathematics; we never can have simple knowledge;
truths are only probably such. So that faith is a mistake in two ways.
First, because it usurps the place of reason, and secondly because it
implies an absolute assent to doctrines, and is dogmatic, which
absolute assent is irrational. Accordingly you will find, certainly in
the future, nay more, even now, even now, that the
writers and thinkers of the day do not even believe there is a God.
They do not believe either the object—a God personal, a
Providence and a moral Governor; and secondly, what they do
believe, viz., that there is some first cause or other, they do not
believe with faith, absolutely, but as a probability.

You will say that their theories have been in the
world and are no new thing. No. Individuals have put them forth, but
they have not been current and popular ideas. Christianity has never
yet had experience of a world {125} simply irreligious. Perhaps China
may be an exception. We do not know enough about it to speak, but
consider what the Roman and Greek world was when Christianity
appeared. It was full of superstition, not of infidelity. There was
much unbelief in all as regards their mythology, and in every educated
man, as to eternal punishment. But there was no casting off the idea
of religion, and of unseen powers who governed the world. When they
spoke of Fate, even here they considered that there was a great moral
governance of the world carried on by fated laws. Their first
principles were the same as ours. Even among the sceptics of Athens,
St. Paul could appeal to the Unknown God. Even to the ignorant
populace of Lystra he could speak of the living God who did them good
from heaven. And so when the northern barbarians came down at a later
age, they, amid all their superstitions, were believers in an unseen
Providence and in the moral law. But we are now coming to a time when
the world does not acknowledge our first principles. Of course I do
not deny that, as in the revolted kingdom of Israel, there will be a
remnant. The history of Elias is here a great consolation for us, for
he was told from heaven that even in that time of idolatrous apostasy,
there were seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees to Baal.
Much more it may be expected now, when our Lord has come and the
Gospel been preached to the whole world, that there will be a remnant
who belong to the soul of the Church, though their eyes are not opened
{126} to acknowledge her who is their true Mother. But I speak first
of the educated world, scientific, literary, political, professional,
artistic—and next of the mass of town population, the two great
classes on which the fortunes of England are turning: the thinking,
speaking and acting England. My Brethren, you are coming into a world,
if present appearances do not deceive, such as priests never came into
before, that is, so far forth as you do go into it, so far as you go
beyond your flocks, and so far as those flocks may be in great danger
as under the influence of the prevailing epidemic.

That the discipline of a seminary is just that
which is suited to meet the present state of things, it does not
become me to attempt to suggest to you now—you, who have so much
better, and so much more authoritative advisers—but I may be allowed
perhaps to follow up what I have said to such conclusions as it seems
to point to.

1. A seminary is the only true guarantee for the
creation of the ecclesiastical spirit. And this is the primary and
true weapon for meeting the age, not controversy. Of course every
Catholic should have an intelligent appreciation of his religion, as
St. Peter says, but still controversy is not the instrument by which
the world is to be resisted and overcome. And this we shall see if we
study that epistle, which comes with an authority of its own, as being
put by the Holy Spirit into the mouth of him who was the chief of the
Apostles. What {127} he addresses to all Christians, is especially
suitable for priests. Indeed he wrote it at a time when the duties of
one and the other, as against the heathen world, were the same. In the
first place he reminds them of what they really were as
Christians, and surely we should take these words as belonging
especially to us ecclesiastics. "You are a chosen generation, a kingly
priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people ..." (1 Pet. ii. 9).

In this ecclesiastical spirit, I will but mention
a spirit of seriousness or recollection. We must gain the habit of
feeling that we are in God's presence, that He sees what we are doing;
and a liking that He does so, a love of knowing it, a delight in the
reflection, "Thou, God, seest me." A priest who feels this deeply will
never misbehave himself in mixed society. It will keep him from
over-familiarity with any of his people; it will keep him from too
many words, from imprudent or unwise speaking; it will teach him to
rule his thoughts. It will be a principle of detachment between him
and even his own people; for he who is accustomed to lean on the
Unseen God, will never be able really to attach himself to any of His
creatures. And thus an elevation of mind will be created, which is the
true weapon which he must use against the infidelity of the world.
(Hence, what St. Peter says: 1, ii, 12, 15; iii, 16.)

Now this I consider to be the true weapon by
which the infidelity of the world is to be met.

2. And next, most important in the same warfare,
and {128} here too you will see how it is connected with a Seminary,
is a sound, accurate, complete knowledge of Catholic theology. This,
though it is not controversial, is the best weapon (after a good life)
in controversy. Any child, well instructed in the catechism,
is, without intending it, a real missioner. And why? Because the world
is full of doubtings and uncertainty, and of inconsistent doctrine—a
clear consistent idea of revealed truth, on the contrary, cannot be
found outside of the Catholic Church. Consistency, completeness, is a
persuasive argument for a system being true. Certainly if it be
inconsistent, it is not truth. [Note 2]

Notes

1. In the manuscript there is a note "about
Infidelity first," and on delivery, §6 (page 128) was inserted here. [See
Note 2—NR.]Return to text

2. [Summary on the last page
of the manuscript]

1Infidelity—induction.Why not by
science?—if not science, so much theworse for
religious probability—
2A persecuting
infidelity, because it is pure
3Fear1. Here our
very growth is against us.It begins to fear us. Englishmen are cruel whenthey are frightened.2.
Toleration is only when we go half way.
4Hitherto Anglicans,
etc., have acted as a shelter, butthis is
going.
5Cheap
publications—popular arguments
6And stories against
Catholicism and scandals.